The Importance of Staging

Staging your home is not a personal decision, it’s a business decision that can have an enormous impact on your return on investment and sales timeline. It’s no coincidence that staged homes sell faster and are easier to sell.

Staged homes are perceived as the best homes on the market thus, leading to more market exposure and potential buyers seeing the value of your home. Why is that? Because buyers need to fall in love with a home and visualize themselves living there.

Here are some tips on successfully staging your home to sell.

1) Prepare to Move Before Listing. Selling your home can be an emotional experience. A home is a place of sentimentality with moments and memories that are important to your family. However, staging and selling your home is first a business decision about your financial future and your family’s future. It is not an indictment on you or your family’s personal preferences.

2) Re-arrange or Remove Furniture. In home staging, less is more. Potential buyers need to feel that the rooms are spacious and flexible. Large furniture and numerous pieces of furniture cloud the ability to see the flexibility of the room.

3) Soothing or Neutral Color Palette. We all have our own personal style and personality that we like, however when selling a home these can damage your ability to sell. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so you may have a teal accent wall that you love, but a potential buyer may hate teal. More times than not paint colors can keep a house from selling quickly and successfully.

4) Clearing out Clutter and Personal Photos. Although the house has been your family’s home, it’s important to remember that you have made the decision to sell so that someone else can make it their home. For buyers to visualize their family living in a home, it’s important that they aren’t seeing your stuff. When a home is filled with personal photos and clutter buyers tend to focus on your family’s lifestyle instead of the house. The best approach is to pack and store the items you don’t need on a daily basis. This will enhance the buyers experience and gives you a head start on packing for your next chapter!

5) Keep It Clean, Maintained and Organized (Inside & Out). Buyers should be viewing your home and not your habits. The perception that a buyer gets when they are walking through a dirty or unorganized home is that the homeowners don’t care about the house and there may be unseen issues. If you have a yard this is the first thing a buyer will see, so having it clean and maintained will help buyers keep an open mind. Keeping beds made, clothing/personal items properly stored away and clean gives the buyer a perception that you are proud of your home.

Selling a home is like selling a product, show off the best features and buyers will see the value.